Historically, the sugar cane plant has been cultivated for its sweetness. This sweetness is a result of the relatively high concentration of sucrose in the plant. Throughout history, man has worked to extract and then purify the sucrose contained in raw cane juice by utilizing crystallization techniques which result in the production of raw sugar, molasses, or mixtures thereof.
Heretofore, traditional processing techniques have attempted to maximize the quantities of raw sugar when treating raw cane juice. The carbohydrates contained in the molasses have a lower economic value when compared to the sugar contained in the raw sugar produced from cane juice. The lower economic value of the carbohydrates contained in molasses is a result of the economic limitations on extracting these carbohydrates therefrom. Current uses of the molasses include, but are not limited to animal feeds, feedstocks for certain chemical processes or the like. Therefore, it is prevalent in the industry to maximize the production of raw sugar while minimizing the production of molasses to take advantage of the higher economic value associated therewith.
Recently, however, certain processes have been disclosed which enable the sugars present in the molasses to be separated from the non-sugars contained therein in an economical manner. Such processes have been disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,975,205 and 3,884,714. These processes are generally referred to in the industry as molasses desugarization processes. In general terms, the molasses desugarization process includes pretreating the molasses to lower the organic and inorganic non-sugars contained in the molasses, and separating the sugar and non-sugar portions of the molasses by passing the molasses over suitable ion exchange resins according to ion exclusion techniques.
In the course of producing a finished sugar product from the sugar portion of the ion excluded molasses, it is essential that objectionable flavor and odor characteristics are removed to ensure that the finished sugar product thus produced will meet or exceed existing standards for such products. It may be possible to achieve certain quantities of suitable finished sugar product by passing the sugar portion of ion excluded molasses over conventional ion exchange materials, such as, for example, animal bone char, commercial carbons, carbonaceous adsorbents or the like. However, these processes are economically disadvantageous due to the reduced volumes of acceptable finished sugar product obtained.
The nature of the sugar cane plant is such that the objectionable flavor and odor characteristics are inherent in the plant and are such that the conventional methods described above are not adequate to completely remove these characteristics from a sugar product produced from ion excluded molasses. Thus, while these inherent flavor and odor characteristics can be substantially removed through the use of the above-described conventional methods, the objectionable flavor and odor characteristics remain in trace amounts or greater even when such conventional methods are utilized.
It has now been discovered that the treatment of the sugar portion produced from the ion exclusion of molasses by a halogen or a nascent halogen agent will completely remove even trace amounts of objectional flavor and odor characteristics associated with the production of a finished sugar product. The method according to the present invention is both economically feasible from a manufacturing viewpoint and produces a finished sugar product which conforms to or exceeds existing standards for such products.
Heretofore, halogen or nascent halogen agents have been used only as an oxidizing agent for the decoloration of sugar solutions, as for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 637,004; 1,591,879, 1,989,156 and 1,826,655. The chlorine disclosed in the above listed patents is generally utilized for the decolorization of raw sugar solutions such that crystalline sugar produced therefrom will be substantially color free. Additionally the chlorine may be utilized as a decolorizing agent according to the above patents when treating raw cane juice and producing raw sugar therefrom.
Therefore, it is a primary object of the present invention to provide a high quality finished sugar product which is completely free of the objectionable flavor and odor characteristics normally associated with cane juice which conforms to or exceeds all existing standards for finished sugar products.
It is a further object of this invention to provide an economical method for removing the objectionable flavor and odor characteristics in a finished sugar product produced from the desugarization of molasses.
These and other objects of the present invention will be more apparent from the discussion which follows.